1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a coupling/decoupling of a telescopic servomanipulator, and more particularly, a coupling/decoupling apparatus which enables to attach/detach a master or a slave servomanipulator to a telescopic extension device easily and accurately with less labor of a single worker.
2. Description of Related Art
A hot cell of a radiation shielded facility is required to be provided in order to perform experiments associated with nuclear power generation and a spent nuclear fuel process. Since a worker is not admitted inside the hot cell due to a probability of radiation exposure, a master-slave manipulator system is used for operating, maintaining, and repairing the process equipments. A master manipulator is located outside the hot cell, and a slave manipulator is located inside the hot cell, and thereby the worker is able to securely work in the hot cell. A remote control technique is used, that is the slave manipulator at a remote area is operated when the worker operates the master manipulator.
The remote control technique is useful for the following business fields, such as an extreme working environment where a person is incapable of accessing, an adverse working environment of waste disposal, and a dangerous working environment of land mine removal. However, the remote control technique has disadvantages, in that a working efficiency may be decreased due to the lack of reality, and a breakdown of a system may occur since an immediate reaction to an unexpected accident, such as collision, is difficult. Accordingly, a new technique which can make the remote control work more realistically is needed. Particularly, a mechanical method or an electrical method which transmits contacting force information using a force feedback to the master manipulator is needed, the interacting force, between the slave manipulator and the working environment.
Also, a wall-mounted mechanical master-slave manipulator system, which is generally applicable to the hot cell, is limitedly used in a working environment since the mechanical master-slave manipulator system is fixed to an inside wall of the hot cell. To solve the limitation of the working coverage, a plurality of identical apparatuses may be arranged in parallel to work. However, this method is not effective since the method may cause waste of resources.
To solve the limitation of the working coverage of the wall-mounted mechanical master-slave manipulator system, an electrical bridge transported servomanipulator, in which a manipulator is coupled with a bridge transporter, is used. For the bridge transporter, a telescopic extension device is generally coupled on a bottom of the transporter being capable of moving the telescopic extension device on a plane, such as a crane, and a manipulator is coupled on a bottom of the telescopic extension device. In a conventional bridge transporter, for repairing or diagnosis, there is a need to decouple the manipulator from the bridge transporter, and accordingly the following problems may occur.
First, when a worker manually lifts up the servomanipulator to couple/decouple the manipulator to/from the telescopic extension device, a plurality of workers are needed, therefore a working efficiency may be decreased and an accident may occur due to direct handling of heave equipment.
Secondly, when a breakdown of the bridge mounted servomanipulator occurs, a worker wearing a special protective clothes cannot access to the dangerous working environment immediately due to the possibility of the radiation exposure. Therefore, the worker waits until a level of radiation is decreased to an acceptable level, which leads the working efficiency be decreased. Accordingly, it may be desirable to couple/decouple the BTSM (Bridge Transported Servo Manipulator) via the remote control by using the wall-mounted mechanical manipulator. However, there is a problem, in that it is difficult to accurately couple the manipulator to the telescopic extension device in an identical location and direction.
Thus, a new apparatus capable of easily and accurately coupling/decoupling the manipulator with minimal labor of a worker is required.